Fatal Enquiry (2 page)

“You admit, then, that he is damaging my reputation. What has he said about me, precisely?”

“Merely that he fears moving about the city freely with you in it.”

“He has reason to fear me.” Barker leaned back in his chair and tented his fingers.

“I’ll trod on him like the vermin he is.”

Poole leaned forward with his hands on Barker’s desk. “You’re not going to listen to reason, are you? As an official of Scotland Yard, I’m warning you to stay away from the docks.”

“Which docks in particular would that be? I’d hate to be working on a case tomorrow and accidentally pass by the one dock I was supposed to avoid, only I didn’t know it.”

“Just stay away from all the docks,” Poole answered, running a finger over his mustache.

“I would not want to inconvenience Captain Nightwine when he arrives.”

“That’s Colonel Nightwine. He has been promoted.”

“Really? When last I saw him he was slinking out of town with a knot in his tail. How is it that he is returning two years later with diplomatic status?”

Poole shrugged. “I only know what the commissioner told me.”

“Do you still have the files you collected?” Barker asked.

“They are hidden where I can get to them if I need them.”

“Good. You understand him, then. He’s got powerful friends and a long memory.”

“I don’t believe I was chosen to protect him out of pure chance. I’m having my nose rubbed in it.” Poole stood. “I should be getting back. You’ve been officially warned off.”

Without a good-bye, the inspector quitted our chambers. There was silence in Barker’s office, save for the occasional drawing on his pipe.

“He forbade you to go, but I suppose you’ll go all the same?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“And what was that about files?”

“I gave Poole a copy of everything I’d gathered for years on Sebastian Nightwine. I was naïve enough to believe it would at least make the CID aware of the scope of his activities.

“Then Terry made some of the information known to Henderson and it even reached the point where the former commissioner considered doing something about it, but the aristocracy closed ranks against him. After that, Henderson dropped the investigation. Poole told me later he went to ‘A’ Division every morning for six months believing he was going to be sacked. In the end, however, it was Henderson who was dismissed.”

“Black Monday,” I said.

“Aye.”

Two months before, on February 8, two rival unions had organized demonstrations in Trafalgar Square. The meetings occurred without incident, but afterward, the crowd, five thousand strong, had no way to work off the emotion engendered by the impassioned speeches. The mob smashed windows in Pall Mall and St. James’s, waking aged peers from their club chairs. A similar meeting in Hyde Park that evening resulted in looting in Oxford Street.

Two days later, during one of London’s “particulars,” word got out of another approaching mob and the citizens panicked. However such false rumors spread, Scotland Yard was blamed for instigating the warning and probably for the fog, as well. Realizing that he was about to become the scapegoat in the whole affair, Henderson promptly resigned. Feeling, perhaps, that radical unionism required a firmer hand, the selection committee replaced him with a commissioner who had a background in the military.

“I thought the commissioner was sacked over the riot.”

“He was, but they were already inclined against him for daring to make charges against Nightwine. That’s why I’m a private enquiry agent and not a CID man. I prefer to be beholden to as few men as possible.”

“Did they ever offer you a position?”

“No, they didn’t.”

I thought about that. If I were in charge of hiring constables, would I choose a man who wore black spectacles and knew a hundred ways to kill people?

“Their loss, then,” I replied.

Barker flashed me a rare grin. “I was of the same opinion.”

CHAPTER TWO

Cyrus Barker may not be an aristocrat, or the son of a famous explorer and philosopher, but his money has allowed him to grow accustomed to being waited on. It was one of my duties whenever I attended the sparring matches he held irregularly with Brother Andrew McClain to tie on his boxing gloves. He didn’t thank me; he was off in that little self-contained world of his behind his quartz spectacles, fighting whatever demons dwelled there. His arm was out, and I was tying up his glove, but the Guv seemed unaware of my existence.

“Brother Andrew,” I murmured to his opponent, before stepping between the ropes and down to the floor. We were in the reverend’s mission in Mile End Road, where he kept a boxing ring according to professional standards in the basement.

“Tommy Boy,” he said back to me at once, patting me on the shoulder.

“Do you need help with your gloves?” I asked, standing on the verge outside and holding onto the ropes.

“I learned how to tie on my own gloves before you were born. What’s got your master’s blood up?”

“He didn’t tell you? Nightwine’s coming to town.”

I hopped down to the floor and tugged once on the string attached to the clapper of a bell, causing it to clang. I had not so much as turned around when the two men met and began trading blows. Looking over my shoulder, I saw that Barker had crossed the canvas and engaged the missionary to Darkest England in his own corner.

There was a smile on Andrew’s lips even after a punch to his jaw rocked his head back. Not so Barker, who looked grim and determined. Having attended dozens of these sessions in this manner, I could state it was not his custom to charge his partner. Normally, he waited to be advanced upon and counterpunched. As McClain had said, his blood was up.

The two men’s bodies were a study in contrasts. McClain was of average height, but bandy-legged, with a stout belly and muscular arms. Barker was taller, his muscles more defined, but his Adonis-like form was marred with tattoos, scars, and burns from a rough life spent in battle. Many of the marks were from secret societies to which he had belonged at one time or another. Barker had the longer reach, but McClain the extra weight. If anyone thought his stomach made of fat, they were mistaken. It was harder than a medicine ball. He was one of the few men in England whom my employer could consider an equal in the ring.

McClain’s only weakness was the gloves he wore. He had been heavyweight bare-knuckle champion of England, before the Marquess of Queensberry rules changed everything in an effort to make the sport less brutal and more civilized. To him the gloves would always be an impediment. In McClain’s eyes, it was man’s nature to tinker with everything until it becomes finally and irretrievably broken, boxing included. After the rules changed, McClain had taken to drink, until a chance encounter with an evangelized prostitute had changed his life. He now used his not inconsiderable skills at oration and head thumping to good effect in the East End, where some would say it was needed most.

The two of them were not boxing per se, although I’ve seen them box according to both the old rules and the new. What they practiced most of the time was a sport I’d dubbed “Dirty Fighting.” It was all one had learned in the mean streets of London against everything the other had acquired in the ports of Asia. The only restriction was the gloves themselves, which limited the use of throws and joint locks, and only an occasional kick or two. I have been in the ring with both of them. With McClain, I felt like a mosquito on the hide of a rhinoceros, while kicking Barker was akin to wrapping one’s shin around an ancient oak. When they went at each other, I considered moving to another room. It was like watching antediluvian carnivores fight over a wounded prey. It was a wonder no one was permanently maimed in these friendly matches of theirs.

“Enough!” Handy Andy cried, pushing Barker back after being cornered in the ring. “I ain’t the one you’re angry with. It’s Nightwine.”

“You’ll do in a pinch, old man,” the Guv replied.

“‘Old,’ he says,” the missionary called to me. “He’s no young pullet, himself.”

It was a dialogue they’d honed for several years, verbal sparring, each of them searching for signs of weakness which in all probability did not exist. Barker thumped a fist into Brother Andrew’s ribs.

“What was that?” Andrew rasped, dancing away. “Is there a bottle fly buzzing about? Has it begun to rain?”

“Raining blows, perhaps,” Barker growled, pursuing him about the ring. He came too close and Brother Andrew shot out a left that caught him on the bridge of the nose.

“He’s got you careless, Cyrus,” Andy said. “When you’re careless, you’ll make mistakes.”

Barker grunted, whether in agreement or dissent, and then launched a flurry of blows, most of which Andy repelled with his thick muscular forearms. When it was done, both had reddened chests. McClain slid the braces off his shoulders, so that they dangled at his knees as if to say “I’ve been playing with you, but now I’m getting serious.” My employer’s only reaction was a look of grim satisfaction.

He charged in and launched a left, which Andrew blocked, but it was a feint to cover a right hook which caught the side of the missionary’s head, causing him to stagger a few steps. Such a blow would have left me unconscious for half an hour, but he shook it off and looked exultant.

“Now that was a blow. Good one!”

It took me back to when Andrew himself had taught me how to block.

“Boxing is a thinking man’s game, Tommy,” he had instructed. “It’s not all brawn and flailing away and hoping to get lucky. You must outthink your opponent to take him down, and you must be willing to step within his striking distance and expect to trade blows.”

When they quit five minutes later, Barker was bleeding freely from the nose and McClain’s left brow was starting to swell. Their arms and chests looked like sides of beef.

“Take out the rest of your frustrations on the heavy bag, Cyrus,” his opponent ordered, stepping out between the ropes. “We’re done here. I’ve got lunch to prepare.”

“You want to take a tour of the ring with me?” Barker asked as he wiped his face with a towel.

“I’m fine,” I assured him.

“Nightwine always does this to him,” McClain said in my ear.

“I know.”

The Guv climbed down out of the ring and began slamming away at the weighted canvas bag at the side of the room. As I watched him pound the bag, I was particularly glad I hadn’t accepted his offer.

A few minutes later, McClain returned from upstairs, where he had seen to the preparation of lunch for his flock, most of whom were indigent. Barker was rubbing his hair with a towel, still lost in thought.

“Cyrus! Can I talk to you in my office for a moment?” Andy turned to me. “Have a seat, lad. We’ll be out in a minute.”

The two disappeared down the corridor while I sat and looked around the room. The chamber must have been built at least a hundred and fifty years before. The stone ceiling was crumbling in places and in need of a mason’s attention. It was like Andy’s ministry in a way, built for hard work and not for show.

The heavy bag still swayed back and forth, showing dents in the canvas from Barker’s final blows.
What was going on in his head?
I wondered. I had never before seen any news drive him to see Brother Andrew. Come to think of it, I believe he’d been agitated the first time he’d taken me to see Sebastian Nightwine, during the week I’d been hired.

I tried to picture the man as I’d seen him last. He was tall, well built, and deeply tanned. The two might have been carved from the same timber, only Nightwine’s had been sanded and polished to a sheen, while Barker was still rough-hewn. Nightwine had thick blond hair and a trim mustache, with amber-colored eyes that reminded me of a tiger.

I peeled off my jacket and waistcoat and had a try at the heavy bag myself. It’s never a good idea to try anything right after Barker has done it. One is certain to feel inferior. In my defense, I’m almost a foot shorter, and the sand at the bottom of the bag is harder packed and heavier than in the middle where he struck it. I almost turned my wrist on the first blow. Afterward, I punched a little higher.

The meeting lasted longer than the minute promised by Brother Andrew. I had grown bored with the bag and donned my jacket again before they finally returned. Normally they did not discuss a topic so sensitive that it required closeting themselves in McClain’s chambers. My employer patted my shoulder as he walked by.

“Practicing on the heavy bag is a good use of your time, lad,” he said.

I was no longer breathing heavily from the bag, which had come to a standstill behind me. How did he know that I had been practicing? It took me a moment to notice the small dents where my fists had been. Cyrus Barker has trained himself to observe everything in a room, either in connection with a murder or as a potential weapon to be used. He would not enter a room that had no sure exit, and he preferred to keep his back to the wall to avoid being attacked from behind. Would I ever learn the skills needed to be the kind of private enquiry agent he was, or was I fooling myself?

“Good-bye, Thomas,” Brother Andrew said. “Come by sometime when this one isn’t leading you about by the nose.”

“Yes, sir, I will,” I promised.

Barker and I walked to Commercial Road and eventually found a hansom cab heading west. The Guv didn’t say a word. In the distance, I heard the Bow Bells peal the twelfth hour. Technically, the rest of the day and the Sabbath were my own. All I had to do was get him to acknowledge the fact.

“Sir, it is noon.” It doesn’t pay to be subtle with Cyrus Barker.

“Is it?” he asked vaguely, as if half of his brain were engaged upon something else.

“Yes, sir, unless you’ve got something else you need me to do.”

“Could you do one thing for me? Go to the Public Records Office and copy down the passenger list for a ship called the SS
Rangoon
.”

“Would this be a ship arriving from Calcutta tomorrow?” I asked.

“It might.”

“How did you get the name, since Inspector Poole refused to give it to you?”